Are the well-known facts about urbanization in the United States also true for the developing world? We compare American metropolitan areas with comparable geographic units in Brazil, China and India. Both Gibrat's Law and Zipf's Law seem to hold as well in Brazil as in the U.S., but China and...

We investigate the relationship between the extent of a city's subway network, its population and its spatial configuration. For the 632 largest cities in the world we construct panel data describing population, measures of centralization calculated from lights at night data, and the extent of...

This paper surveys recent literature examining the relationship between environmental amenities and urban growth. In this survey, we focus on the role of both exogenous attributes such as climate and coastal access as well as endogenous attributes such as local air pollution and green space. A...

We examine the relationship between urban characteristics in 1960 and urban growth (income and population) between 1960 and 1990. Our major findings are that income and population growth move together and both types of growth are (1) positively related to initial schooling, (2) negatively...

This paper proposes a simple theory of a system of cities that decomposes the determinants of the city size distribution into three main components: efficiency, amenities, and frictions. Higher efficiency and better amenities lead to larger cities, but also to greater frictions through...

By empirically assessing the competitiveness of 505 cities around the world from regional, national and other perspectives, this book not only ranks these cities but also presents a treasure trove of information with regard to each city’s relative strengths and weaknesses. This unique resource...

Introduction -- The Impact of Outward-Oriented Economic Reform on Income Inequality in China: 1978 – 2007 -- The continuity and changes of the hukou system since the 1990s: a critical review -- Land Reform, urban development and Migrant Housing in Contemporary China -- The Urban Village of...

GDP growth is often measured poorly for countries and rarely measured at all for cities or subnational regions. We propose a readily available proxy: satellite data on lights at night. We develop a statistical framework that uses lights growth to augment existing income growth measures, under...

Chapter 1: The Startup Common -- Part 1: Exploring the Startup Common -- Chapter 2: Creating Pillar Companies -- Chapter 3: Launching Startups from Universities -- Chapter 4: Deepening the Human Capital Pool -- Chapter 5: Sourcing Investment Capital -- Chapter 6: Building Mentor Networks --...

Introduction -- Chapter One: The Rural–urban Division -- Chapter Two: Literature Review -- Chapter Three: Policies and Institutions Concerning Resource Flow -- Chapter Four: Methodology -- Chapter Five: Peasants’ View -- Chapter Six: Officials’ View -- Chapter Seven: Quantitative Results...